40 Learning Quotes That Will Inspire You

GDC Team

Global Digital Citizen Foundation |

“We all naturally want to become successful … we also want to take shortcuts. And it’s
easy to do so, but you can never take away the effort of hard work and discipline and
sacrifice.”
—Apolo Ohno

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”

—Benjamin Franklin

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

—Bill Gates

“I touch the future. I teach.”

—Christa McAuliffe

“I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of

something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the
tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past.”
—Clara Barton

“Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To
me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest
development of one’s potential.”
—Bruce Lee

“Do I have wisdom? No, I do not have. If someone is to ask me a question, I do not
think I would be able to answer. But I will point out two sides of the problem, to help
him solve the problem.”
—Confucius

“Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then
you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life.
Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism.”
—David M. Burns

“A single conversation with a wise man during the eating of a meal is better than ten
years’ mere study of books.”
—Chinese Proverb

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children,
play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”
—Fred Rogers

“All the world is my school and all humanity is my teacher.”

—George Whitman
“The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.”
—Gloria Steinem

“When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don’t make a
production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults,
and evasion simply muddles ’em.”
—Atticus Finch, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”
—Helen Keller

“Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month, the boy who had made his
own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be
necessary for this? Or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the
Institute in the meanwhile, and had received a Rodgers’ penknife from his father?”
—Henry David Thoreau
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that
you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.”
—J. K. Rowling

“Life is not about how many times you fall down. It’s about how many times you get
back up.”
—Jaime Escalante

“There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and
finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment
you die, is a process of learning.”
—Jiddu Krishnamurti

“We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience.”

—John Dewey

“I always thought the idea of education was to learn to think for yourself.”
—John Keating (fictional teacher portrayed by Robin Williams in ‘Dead Poets’
Society’)

“The greatest sign of success for a teacher … is to be able to say, ‘The children are now
working as if I did not exist.’”
—Maria Montessori
“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.”
—Mark Twain

“We have a powerful potential in our youth, and we must have the courage to change
old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends.”
—Mary McLeod Bethume

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but
people will never forget how you made them feel.”
—Maya Angelou

“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other
neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known
universe.”
—Michio Kaku

“Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write

a masterpiece.”
—Nadia Boulanger

“Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will
never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two
make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what
they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a
marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another
child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may
become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for
anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another
who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world
worthy of its children.”
—Pablo Casals

“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve
the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is
wrong.”
—R. Buckminster Fuller
“I teach my students that while rules are necessary, many of our greatest heroes became
heroes by not following the rules. […] Extraordinary people throughout history have
done this, and if we want our children to reach such heights, they need to know the rules
but see past a chart on the wall. There will be times when the chart is not there. More
important, there will be times when the chart is wrong.”
—Rafe Esquith

“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all
about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if
you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things
you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do.
Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you
from doing anything at all.”
—Richard Feynman

“What you learn from others you can use to follow. What you learn for yourself you can
use to lead.”
—Richard Hamming

“Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to
do something.”
—Robert A. Heinlein

“Studying whether there’s life on Mars or studying how the universe began, there’s
something magical about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. That’s something
that is almost part of being human, and I’m certain that will continue.”
—Sally Ride

“Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re
basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with
them.”
—Steve Jobs

“The difference between school and life? In school, you’re taught a lesson and then
given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.”—Tom Bodett

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